The Potato Queens Were Pretty Sweet Actually

 I joined the first St. Patrick's Day Parade because Inez said I could.  You'd be surprised how many of my stories start that way.  She was Merlin, and I was Wart in the peculiar Camelot of Millsaps in the 80s.  At nineteen, I wore a suit to work because I was trying to impress upon my father and grandfather that I could make something of myself, despite myself.  

I didn't change clothes after work because I was in a bad mood.  The plan was to buy twelve beers, kept cold in the ice chest in my trunk that had been there since the ninth grade, for just this purpose, get an Inez Burger and Cheese Fries to go and drink myself into oblivion, listening to U2 on the porch of the KA house.  I was in a bad mood because a pretty blonde girl, with a french name, from the delta told me we couldn't do again what we had done before because her heart belonged to another, and she wanted to be free in case he noticed her.  While I respected her position, I was in a sour mood because I was tired of being confused by women, but burgers and beer and music were never confusing, so I had my agenda set.

Only, when I got to CS's to place my order, it was already packed.  Packed by an unusual crowd and surrounded by cars and trucks and convertibles, who weren't parked, but in line for something.  

"It's a parade, baby.  Get in!"

That's all the invitation I needed.  I suspect Inez meant for me to get in one of the convertibles or pickup trucks lined up for the parade.  I had other ideas.  "Boyd's in the tree, again."  Was a pretty common phrase in those days.  Something about alcohol (and similar devices) inspired a desire in me to rise above the common man, usually by way of a tree, a wall, or a ladder.  It may have been related to my watching King Kong over 100 times by then, but it more likely began with the massive magnolia tree in front of my Bubba's house on St Ann Street.  Sometimes I would take a co-conspirator with me.  William Douglass Mann was the perfect companion on these missions, but he wasn't there that day.

Not having many actual floats or other parade accouterments, Malcolm and Pat arranged for two or three beer delivery trucks to be in the parade.  I'm not sure why they don't have beer delivery trucks in every parade.  It seems like a natural choice.  Inez wanted me to get in one of the convertibles, but I noticed the nice wide, flat roof of the beer truck, then I noticed that its bumper led to some nicely arranged footholds leading to the roof.  I knew what I had to do.

The Roof!  Despite wearing my Allen Edmonds oxfords and my navy, chalk-striped suit, I made short work of ascending the back of the beer truck, and I did it holding a Budwiser long-neck.  Beat that, King Kong.

"Boyd!" My friend Bonehead shouted from below.  "How did you get up there?"  I pointed to the rear bumper, and soon there were two.  "Boyd!"  It was my brother this time.  Somehow he had gotten prior word of the parade and wore appropriate green attire.  I pointed to the bumper, and then there were three.

Whoever designed beer trucks knew that streetlights and powerlines hung at a certain height above the street, and they had to design their trucks to go safely under them.  What they didn't account for was three drunk boys standing on top of the truck.  Fortunately, my brother was alert enough to shout "Duck" in time to prevent Bonehead or me from getting our heads knocked off by a street light as the parade got underway.

A few cars ahead of us were a bunch of girls I knew dressed as floozies, throwing what looked like actual sweet potatoes to the crowd on the sidewalk watching our spectacle.  They would soon realize that throwing quarter-pound sweet potatoes out of a moving car into an unsuspecting audience might carry some danger and liability, so actual sweet potatoes didn't make another appearance in what would become the yearly St. Patricks Day parade.  

The Sweet Potato Queens were always fascinating to me.  In any other capitol city, they would have become an icon of the gay and drag culture, but in Jackson, Mississippi, they became a model for girls on the rubicon of turning thirty, who were Sorority girls and Debutantes, and trying not to become their mother, while becoming their mother.  Having known some of their actual mothers, that wouldn't have been such a bad thing, but these women wanted to have a more unique experience in our culture.  

Some of them were actually the older sisters of boys I knew.  I recognized them from CS's, Poets, Cherokee, and Scrooge's, which pretty much summed up the under-forty social world of Jackson at the time, unless you were wearing cowboy boots.  In those days, there wasn't that much to offer young women besides the Junior League, The Garden Club, and motherhood.  Most of these girls would go on to participate in each of these roles, but every one of them would also make their mark in some new and unusual way that enriched Mississippi and Jackson.  I cannot think of one I do not love and admire.

In the years that followed, I would design and build and paint many St. Paddy's day floats, whether I rode in them or not.  Even in my years in self-prescribed exile, I watched the parade from my window, remembering the parades of the past.  It's not often you get to witness the birth of a cultural touchstone, but I was there the day the Sweet Potato Queens stepped out into the world.  

The parade ended at the parking lot by George Street Grocery.  Having not planned to be in the parade, we hadn't arranged for a ride home, so Bonehead, my Brother, and I hoofed it back down West Street to Millsaps, despite our less-than-sober condition.    "That was cool!  Let's do it again!" And we did.

I Followed the Moonshadow

"Teaser, I have an idea."

"Yes, Firecat?"

"I want you to give up your plow, your land, and even your hands."

"I don't understand, Firecat."

"Then, I want you to give up your eyes, your legs, and your mouth."

"I don't understand, Firecat; what will this get me?"

"If you do these things, then you won't have to work, or cry, or walk, or even to talk no more."

"What sort of man will I be if I cannot work or walk or talk or cry?"

"You can do these things now, Teaser.  Are you happy?"

"No.  I am very unhappy, Firecat."

"You are my closest companion.  Come with me, child, and we will follow the moon's shadow and leave all these things behind."

And so, I gave up my work, my hands, my legs, my eyes, and my mouth, and I followed Firecat and the shadow of the moon.  We went further and further into the wood of forgets, trying to be happy.

One day, I woke and knew that I couldn't work, I couldn't walk, I couldn't talk, and I couldn't see.

"Firecat!  I have to go back!  This is death!"

"The carpenter's son said, if you go back now, your father will have a feast and serve the fatted calf and welcome you as his lost lamb."

"I don't want a feast.  I don't want a fatted calf.  I just want to be in the world again."  I said.

"I know, child."

"I would like to see my father again, though."

"I know, child."

"Are you my father, Firecat?"

"I am your friend."

"I'm leaving now, Firecat.  I'm going into the world again--Will you go with me?"

"I'm always with you, Teaser.  I've never left you."

"What will people say--when I find the world again?"

"They will say Welcome Home, Teaser.  You are our lamb."

Working For My Dad

Sometimes people wonder how I could have screwed up working for my dad.  That seems like such an easy and obvious gig.  My job for my dad was to find and hire and work with very talented people to do very creative things and pay them to do these things for Missco.  That was my job, and I was paid well.

That my dad gave me that job told me he was trying pretty hard to hear when I talked about what I wanted from life but that I might be doing a pretty crappy job of explaining what I meant.  I knew what I wanted to say.  Even in those days, words were my weapons, but I felt like I needed to keep that hidden.  It made me too different. 

I was meeting and working with people who knew and understood all the things that were important to me in life, and I was spending a great deal of time with them, but I was getting more and more lonely because I was a bird paying other creatures to fly for me.  I used a twelve thousand dollar computer to arrange and organize and execute other people's work, and occasionally use chatrooms to try and find people who understood me.  

My dad loved me and thought he was offering me a way to be happy, but whatever gifts God gave me were dying from the inside out, and I didn't know how to make it stop.  I was in trouble and I knew it.  He did too.  

"What are we gonna do buddy?" he would ask.

"I don't know pop.  I really don't."

My other problem was that I inherited a trait from Jim Campbell that whenever I heard the cries of anything or anyone in trouble, I'd jump in with both feet to fix it, acting like I was more invincible than Superman.  That I wasn't actually invincible was immaterial.  This was the Campbell way.

The problem is that, when you're twenty-five, there are a lot of people with a lot of problems you can't do a goddamn thing about.  Whatever time, money, or effort I was spending was immaterial because what I wanted to accomplish wasn't happening.  I was failing over and over at something that was very important to me.  To make matters worse, in the eighties and nineties, these voices of people in pain were often ladies, and as a Kappa Alpha, I had literally sworn to protect them with my life just a few years before.  Most were sincere and genuine, nearly all, but there were a rare few who saw this as an opportunity, one I felt like I had no right to deny them.  I felt like companionship wasn't meant for me.  I was a different sort of creature.  Those were difficult days.

I ended up in a situation where many people knew about me, my picture was in the paper, and my name was in print, just everywhere, and I was invited to everything, but there were maybe five people who knew anything about me, and even if they didn't understand why, they knew I was in trouble and sinking fast.  When Dad died, and the control of Missco went berserk, I felt really bad because I knew this was my escape plan.  

Escaping from Missco meant I had to spend a few years in the belly of the whale and a few years wandering the desert after that.   Seeking out wise men, I found Brent Lefavor, who became my Chiron, and he taught me I could slowly break away the plaster covering my own wings.  Now, I'm old, but I'm free, and I CAN FLY.  

What Happened To My First Three Books

 When "The Secret History" came out in 1992, I read it.  Then, I threw out about a dozen 3M 3.5-inch data disks containing three books I'd been working on for about ten years.  Tartt's work was so clear, powerful, and self-assured that I felt there was no point in trying to make anything of the confused assembled scribbles I was working on.  

I was already a little nervous about Beth Henly being from Jackson and just eleven years older than I was.  Tartt was six months younger than me and from a house just a few streets over from my cousin Robert in Greenwood.  Did the world really want to hear from an over-privileged white boy of my generation when there were so much clearer and more interesting voices to choose from?  Then "The Help" came out from Kathryn Stockett, who's just six years younger than me and from the same neighborhood.  I'd visited her Grandfather often, who mainly only wanted to talk about my namesake, who was his peer.  

After that, this writing thing, I figured, just wasn't for me.  I was surrounded by it.  It was in the air I breathed, but they were so good, and I was barely able to read books with chapters before I was thirteen, and even now, without computers, it's very difficult for me to put a sentence together properly.  

The creative process, I learned, was wrought with self-doubt.  If it's not, you're probably an asshole, and eventually, it will show in your work.  Comparing my work to others isn't fruitful or helpful.  My goal is not to compete with someone else's work but to get these ideas in my head down on paper so they'll leave me alone.  

The ideas I was working on when I threw those disks away are still inside me.  They probably will be until I make something of them.  I don't feel like anything was lost.  I just had a tantrum because I was scared.  That happens sometimes.  It happens to me a lot.  I'm learning that if I tell people I'm working on something, I can't destroy it in secret when I have moments of self-doubt or frustration that my vision hasn't focused itself yet.  It's a little trick to keep me disciplined and hopefully prompt me to keep moving forward, even when the doubts start to creep in.